all you had to do was
look and
see
what was right in ******* front of you

Don't do it
Don't do it
Don't
Do
It

Scars on my wrists, scars on my legs,
“Stop hurting yourself,” he begs.
Can’t stop crying. “I’m just so tired,” I sigh.
I’m alone, and I think I want to die.

you were so used to hiding everything
from everyone,
you didn't know what to do
once someone knew all your secrets.

I’m doing fine without you.
Everyone said it and everyone was so sure
and everyone was right because
I can go whole hours and days without thinking of you. I never thought I would be able to do that.
I’m doing fine without you,
and I hope you’re fine, too.
I’d say sorry but neither of us are. I’d say I miss you but I don’t.
You’d say you hate me but you probably don’t care enough anymore.
Hate is exhausting, I know.
I’m doing fine without you.
It’ll be a year in July since I found someone better.
And it’ll be two in August since we ruined everything.
Bout five since I didn’t know who you were,
so about five since I was happiest.
But I’m happy again.
I’m doing fine without you.

I'm stuck.
I can't find beautiful sentences to fit these feelings into,
I can't think of an arrangement of colors to describe the way I feel like I am about to explode.
I keep searching for a string of words to fit perfectly like all the ones I read cause I swear I could've written them.
Why don't I ever find the perfect thing to say?
All these things are trapped inside of me and I can't, for the life of me, figure out a safe way to let them out.
They build and build and I feel I am forever looking for my own way to release them,
I just haven't found it yet.
Words call out to me
but never fall out of me.
Never the right ones.

*6.21.13

I'm too tired to consider this good work
My message is simple and then I'll drift off

-I will not feel bad
-I do not deserve to feel bad
-we all make choices, I can live with mine
-it is not my fault, it is exactly the opposite
-I am doing the best I can
-I will be okay

a hollow in my stomach
sometimes i feel sick
a hole in my heart
maybe it was always there
a clock that only i can hear ticking
i wish i could say that i didn't know
it was possible to want something so badly it hurt but i have felt it before
just never so much of it
my tongue wants to speak cliches into repetition madness
my eyes want to cry an ocean up to the moon
my head gives me useless ******* logic

my heart wants you more every day

you should have stayed
you should have stayed

           i'm over that now

and here i am, screaming inside,
screaming in your heart
"i couldn't hate you and loving you
might be destroying me
LOVE ME
LOVE ME
god please,
love me"

here i am, on my knees,
watching a clock with broken ******* hands,
with my broken hands
trying to make it work

i would say, "here i am again"
but it seems to be a different place every time i fall down here.
maybe like a house you've been visiting since childhood but each time you find it, it's on a different street, it's a different color, full of different furniture.
i'm in it again.
i don't remember how.
it's a blur of empty words
too much sleep
miles of cigarettes
and a need to bleed.
it occurs to me there's no one to drag me out alive this time.

on a day that seems designed to make my arms feel a little emptier than all the rest
on a day i am supposed to celebrate those i am most envious of
on a day when i face my biggest challenge of being kind and selfless, i think i fail
because today i can't sacrifice my feelings to rise above, it hurts too much



Happy Mother's Day, 2019

i start by telling her i am convinced there are almost no moments that matter,
like really profoundly matter,
and i am subliminally convinced of this, especially when i am alone.
but then i swear to her, there i was all alone in a basement staring a small, blurry two dimensional copy of you,
and when i look at your smile in the photo, mine grows bigger
and i let out this soft, unintentional laugh,
at the exact moment i feel tears rolling down my face, and my body seems to know before my heart does, and my heart knows before my mind does.  
and i knew then.
i knew then that i was wrong, that i was not stuck in a series of inutile moments that in grand design, meant nothing at all. if all the other moments i thought a waste led me here, i valued them.
this moment was a brick wall and a cleansing rain. it was the absolute moment i knew i would spend my life happily earning your trust, your time, your heart.
i tell her this with relief on my breath because the hurricane in my head named after you has settled, and i am more than ready to start building back up.

I went numb for a while, 'cause it was easier than all the questions
and all the depression. But I also think maybe I was numb before that,
probably a little more each day since I lost a bit of myself, and then I lost a lot more.
Life is just too much to let it all in, you know? How is one young soul supposed to absorb it all?
I think we shut it all out and we get selfish, because it is one hundred million times easier to focus on our own silly little problems than to think of those that suffer horrendous crimes, families who starve, or even to think of the brutalities animals face so we can have a dinner we prefer.
What about the lonely people?
How could you live a carefree life if you let in the thought of how many people you've hurt, or how those few hurt you? God, no.
Why would you? It'd be torture. You let that go, even if it takes a while.

But what if you can't? What if it turns out, you aren't like the rest? What if all the sadnesses and tragedies keep you up at night? What if you're 19 and you're pretty sure life is eventually going to be so ******* much that it will inevitably crush you? What if you are scared to death that you operate so differently than other humans, that you won't make the cut?

What if you're shaking and crying in bed at 11:58 pm, after a day of putting in all the effort to act normal
and you are burying yourself in music praying to fall asleep before it all really hits you
and it occurs to you that empathy and worry and fear is going to drive you six feet under?

What will happen?

I have lived too much life
And it is not my fault I was born with love bleeding into my chest
I have a thousand things to apologize for, but I have always given full disclosure
Printed warning signs on my hands
Before I ever touched you
I'll tell anyone endlessly how I can't promise much anymore
I really am to blame for saying things I should not have, that's something I've mostly grown out of, I hold my thoughts behind my tongue for months and years sometimes until I am sure... But I can't change the words I gave you in a younger time
I can't wish hard enough I'd left you alone
And it's all for nothing while you bleed
You look at me, see what you need to see
I just wish you knew that I KNOW, and it makes me twist in ****** thorns understanding both sides.
I'm sorry.

I think it's really good that I can't write poetry anymore
Or is it?
Am I fixed or am I numbed?
Did she pull all the broken glass out of my mouth?
Did I swallow it?
Can you run from the wreckage and fall apart in the very first place you ever felt safe,
Does that make it okay?
My heart is a tragedy
Always sad, always awake alone at night
And I would not change it.
But
Why didn't I ever dream of anything?
Did I forget?
Jesus Christ
I didn't build this life for me
My heart was torn and stitched and ripped and sewn and sprayed blood over half the country before I sat here in one place to say
Am I fixed?

why do you have to be sad before you appreciate happy? why does that burning inspiration only come when you are in darkness? why do I fill pages while a knot of sadness sits in my stomach? why do the urges to pour out feelings no longer come while I am enjoying my time, myself, my love? why does happiness stomp out creativity like a cigarette in an ashtray and sadness lights it back up with some addictive flame? yes… the sadness might make you sink low, low, low, but that’s where the passion is. when you are low and you don’t understand, you either write about it, draw it out, paint it into vision, you express it in some way, or you **** yourself. you have to do something with all those raw feelings. what about happiness though? happiness is so bright and special, why don’t I want or need to express that? is my happy less than everyone else’s? why are things so right when I’m so broken? I only understand myself in sadness. happiness makes me question everything. sadness feels like being in love. are those the only two things I can really feel? sadness and love?… the only times I feel alive, the only times I feel like me are when I have something to write about, something to consume me in 4am thoughts, something that makes it all so real, to make me need to get it out and appreciate the intensity in another form.

The world always made me feel like I am
too much, too fast
And maybe that's just really unfair
Maybe the only one I should apologize to
is myself
For saying, "shh, keep that in. They're not ready for that."
I am not sorry I lived too much, too soon. I am not sorry I know too well what I want and need now.

i just know i made you feel so alive

first heartaches
but not an innocent
and gentle
introduction
to sorrow

first heartbreaks
of fists and claws
tearing fibers away
memories of stumbling, gripping
the threads together, so far from sewn

stitched heart strings
together, or tried to,
fire came, not right
but right on time, and blazed through
the twines and lines

first heart pains
not kind or lenient,
or considerate of youth.
ripped and burned,
and drained,
and i had only a child’s blood to bleed.

My head is heavy
My hands are weak
Guilt on my throat
I can never really speak

My neck can't hold up my thoughts
Jesus Christ, you're all I've got

Never would have let this happen
Too much on the line to lose
But maybe it's better than the other way
Maybe I really needed you

The truth of the darkness is
I carry broken hearts with me
Scars and stars and all kinds of
Bittersweet

But I'll use razor trails as notebook lines
And write a story on my skin
I'm brave and scathed
And I swear I'd do it all again

I don't agree or like how it isn't normal or common or nice to say that I don't know if I'm supposed to be with you.
you make me feel so empty sometimes. like when I think of you saying her name or telling me those stories that send my heart to the bottom of my torso
how am I supposed to know if this is how it's supposed to be? sure, baby, you make me so happy. you make me ache with want. is that how it's supposed to be?
you know and I've said
love has never been worth it for me
and God it's never made sense
this doesn't make sense.
you make me feel like I'm running on empty, babe
you make me feel drained and sorry and restless and forever seventeen
you make me jealous and angry and you make me feel just as notgoodenough as the rest of em, love
why can't I just say this to you? it's not like it isn't any of your business. this could be a feeling that keeps my ring off your finger.

baby
baby
I wanna make your stomach flip
but I have never been deserved by anyone
I have always been too good
too kind
too much too soon
too ready to be loved
the way
I always should have been





I wish you would have been the first

time will build us up and tear you down
love with fill us with hope and **** the life right out of you
and i just stood there, unaware and naive,
crying in my driveway
i'd give anything to believe in it all as much as i did then.
i trusted that everything would work out.
it's nothing compared to what could be, but it was everything.
some lessons should have never been learned. some may have ruined us. some made us strong by turning bones to stone, skin to ice.
beautiful melody,
my lyrics fit you perfectly.
but for a heart so cold, a mind so numb,
perhaps silence is the remedy.

hard, unfair, hopeless
silence.